A Spartan Thing
by Sam the Wise
Summary: Spartans have always had their own little mannerisms and quirks. Blue Team is no exception. Rated for blood.


**_A/N: I just wanted to write a short little thing. Nothing major. I just have this headcanon that they do a lot of affectionate headbutting to show, well, affection, without getting all mushy-gushy. I might write more of these things._**

 ** _Anyway, enjoy._**

 ** _EDIT: Updated, because I went through and saw some horrible spelling errors. Those are now fixed. Let me know if you see any._**

* * *

His shields went with a pop, and then heat. It scorched his abdomen and knocked him off balance, sending him skidding across the smooth Covenant metal.

Fred's MJOLNIR's medical suite bleeped and alerted him that it was cauterized, but pierced all the way through from stomach to back, narrowly missing his hip. He grunted in pain and dodged as spurts of plasma shot overhead, and dashed for cover. He slapped another mag into his DMR and waited for his shields to recover.

"Blue One, status?" came the lightly accented voice of Kelly, who spared only a cursory glance his way.

"Missed everything important, I think." His fingers examined the wound. Not bleeding, but it stung like hell and was hot as fire around the edges, but he'd live. Adrenaline was coursing through him now.

"Chief's pushing a forward assault. We'll need you."

"Yeah," Fred said after a pause, "I'm on it."

He pushed the pain of the wound into the back of his mind and pushed onward, soon catching up to John and Kelly. He spotted Linda making short work of the jackals perched on the railing of the antechamber. He shot two rounds into the nearest jackal before Linda got to it, just for good measure.

As one, Blue Team pushed onward, through the swarm of Storm Covenant. The cruiser was a mess, both inside and out. A maze of supplies scattered about wherever they would fit, massive open spaces where gaping holes have torn the barriers between sections apart. They didn't seem to know how to properly maintain a ship this size, either, especially without the Engineers. Panels and shiny Covenant metal warped where old wounds had been patched up in a shoddy attempt to keep the ship in one piece.

Fred smashed his fist into the face of a grunt, blew the brains out of another with a well-placed DMR shot. It would be waves of cannon fodder before things got challenging, then.

Blue Team approached the bridge as one, wading through masses of Covenant bodies like thick water. When he adjusted his grip on his rifle, he saw the faint shimmer of luminescent blood coating his gauntlet. It made the joints glue together and he had to flex his fingers and roll his wrist a few times to free them up. What a mess.

The doors to the bridge slid open when they neared and John was the first to step through, followed by Linda and Fred, then Kelly.

Atop the dais at the center of the bridge stood two sangheili swordsmen. _Two very angry sangheili swordsmen_ , Fred noted. He winked a questioning light to the Chief over their HUDs.

John lightly brushed Kelly's shoulder plate, jerked his head, and headed along the wall. The two sangheili snarled as they caught on and they split, one heading for Fred and Linda while the other went straight for John and Kelly. Fred squinted behind his visor and raised his DMR.

The swordsman charged forward, and while Linda kept focused fire to drain the sangheili's shields, Fred unsheathed his combat knife.

Heat sizzled past him and he dodged to the right, dipping under the swordsman's left arm. He kicked the backs of his opponent's legs where the armor was sparse, then followed it with an upward slash with his combat knife, grazing the thinning energy barrier. A few more shots from Linda ought to do it- there! The sangheili howled in rage and spun around, its free hand swinging to strike the side of Fred's helmet.

Fred barely managed to duck, leaning away while simultaneously sinking low to avoid the energy sword that followed.

Launching forward on bent knees, Fred surged forward - or threw, more like - himself at the sangheili, using his half-ton weight to knock the alien off balance, then dug his blade deep into the space between armor and skin. He sunk the knife between ribs and twisted. Indigo blood flowed freely.

The alien sputtered until a clean shot to the skull sent its brains spewing, and it tumbled over. Fred could feel the slickness of sangheili blood and brains coat his forearms.

Fred huffed and tugged the knife free. Linda offered him a hand and pulled him to his feet, then patted his shoulder once when he was up. _Good job_.

On the other side of the dais, John and Kelly were already picking through the databanks and collecting ammunition, their opponent long forgotten against the far wall.

"Several of these logs pertain to a supposed "God Planet", but I can't find any evidence that they know its location, or even if it actually exists. The most recent entries mention a guide." Kelly scrolled through the ship's logs.

"Another Great Journey?" Fred asked.

"Perhaps," said Kelly. "Communications logs are _filled_ with this stuff. Creation, Reclamation, Guide, Gods- keywords. I can't figure their meaning, however, because the context is… muddled."

John looked up then, and asked, "What do you mean?"

Kelly shook her head. "The language. It's like they're deliberately communicating in gibberish."

"Run it through again," John said.

"I already have, just in case. _Twice_."

The Chief was quiet for a long moment. "Download the database, erase what's left behind."

Kelly nodded and turned back to the consoles. Fred was no expert on Covenant tech, or Forerunner relics, but he dearly hoped what they came for was worth it. His wound was starting to throb again, and stung around the edges.

 _Relic hunting_ , Fred thought sourly as he took up point near the bridge's entrance. _Because forerunners just couldn't help but leave bits of themselves behind. Everywhere._

Kelly finished up, and Blue team headed back to the Infinity.

* * *

"No significant blood loss. Tissue damage mostly, so I'll administer a few injections and prescribe some rest- no strain until it's healed, understood?"

"Yes ma'am-"

"You get back here in exactly four hours so I can replace your bandage."

" _Yes ma'am_."

"Good," the elderly doctor smiled sweetly at him and waved him off in a shooing gesture. "Now go. I have others to attend to. And _don't forget_."

Fred sighed. "Understood, ma'am." He watched her nod approvingly before he slipped off the examination table and slip on a standard off-duty shirt, pulling it gingerly over the still-sore wound. Thankfully, Spartans healed fast.

The clothes were too soft, and much too light, but the damage to his armor needed to be repaired and the plating was glued with alien blood. It needed to be cleaned, so Fred was effectively naked for the majority of his rest period. No armor, no exercising, no training. He was feeling stir-crazy already.

He stretched until struck with a brief flash of pain. No stretching either, then. Bummer.

With a huff, Fred set out at a brisk pace for the gym; not to get any time in for himself, but because he knew that's where his family would be. Probably off in the corner to avoid the IVs. A bunch of loud, reckless ODSTs in his opinion, though John didn't seem to mind them much. Linda had expressed a wariness of them once, when they'd first met up with John a few months ago. Her views hadn't changed.

Kelly hadn't said a word. But then, if John trusted them, so would she. Of course she had nothing to say.

He keyed open the door to the gym and swiftly made his way to the corner where the rest of Blue Team had gathered. He knew them too well. He joined in on their conversation seamlessly, as if he'd never been gone. They were talking about the previous mission.

"I know the Covenant is more a menagerie than a warforce, but that was…"

"Lacking?" Fred sat with his back to the wall.

Kelly nodded. "Lacking. If this was important, I'd think they would be capable of protecting it much better than that."

"Two swordsmen don't count, then?" Linda asked.

"To the new guys, maybe," Fred said, grinning slightly. "Us? No big deal."

John paused in his workout to fix Fred with a strange look, one brow quirked. But he didn't say anything, apparently finding humor in all of this somehow without actually showing it. Typical Chief.

They were silent for a long while, and Fred watched them work. He shifted a few times, hissing when the bandage caught and adjusting his position for more comfort. The pain was less compared to what it had been before, like being poked with a round-tipped knife; sharp, but ending with a soft point. All the way through the abdomen, too, so finding any comfortable sitting position was difficult.

Linda stood up suddenly, set her rifle against the wall, then took two long strides toward Fred. She knelt before him.

"Be careful," she said blandly. She reached around his neck and pulled him forward to press his forehead against hers. It was brief, but it conveyed a world of emotion; concern, love, assurance, a need to defend.

Fred returned it fully by reaching his own hand around her neck, completing the gesture. He let her go after a moment and she stepped away. Her face was as impassive as ever, but Fred could always tell; she was relieved, even if she didn't show it.

The rest of his siblings had stopped what they were doing and cycled through various faint expressions only a Spartan could figure out. Kelly stepped forward, reached out her hand. Fred responded in kind.

It was a Spartan thing.


End file.
